Marie Ringwald’s sculpture is inspired by everyday, simply made buildings that are designed for working in or to hold materials, animals and products. Her images are based on warehouses, barns, sheds, and vernacular architecture like Quonset huts, as well as, sometimes, old amusement park architecture. She sketches and takes photographs locally and during her travels. Images from photographs (some given to her by friends), movies and TV also play a part in her art. She starts by remembering a place and then abstracting essentials that – to her – evoke a personal, clear but universal memory. She uses a variety of paints, found and new wood, sheet metal & other construction materials, and sometimes lighting - the same materials that make up the buildings that inspire her.
Ringwald had her first solo shows in 1977. She has exhibited throughout the US as well as in South America and Europe. She has shown at the Katzen Art Center and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in DC and the Anchorage Museum of History and Art in Alaska. Her work is in collections including DC City Hall, the National Association of Home Builders, Long and Foster Realtors, Fannie May, the Washington Post, and several law firms in DC as well as in private collections in the Netherlands, Peru and Canada and throughout the US. She is currently represented by Long View Gallery in DC.
Born, raised and educated in the Bronx, New York, Marie Ringwald earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Hunter College, City University of New York in 1970. She did graduate work at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia PA. In 1971 she moved to Washington, DC where she started working and showing with a group of women artists. She began teaching at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in 1976. She became a full Professor in 1992. She was Chairman of the Foundation Department (freshman year) for a total of ten years. She left teaching in 2003 in order to work full time in her studio. Since 1978 her studio has been a post civil war brick building that was originally built as a boarding house in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington D.C.
